22 Nov, 2024

Ireland fines Meta €91 million for storing passwords in plaintext

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) in Ireland has fined Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (MPIL) €91 million ($100 million) for storing in plaintext passwords of hundreds of millions of users. The incident occurred in 2019. At the time, Meta disclosed it publicly and notified DPC, which initiated an investigation into the tech giant’s practices for storing […]

2 mins read

Meta’s ‘Pay or Consent’ Data Model Breaches EU Law

Regulators say the tech giant breached the Digital Markets Act in requiring Instagram and Facebook users to pay if they don’t want personal data used to generate targeted ads. European Union regulators have accused Meta of breaching the bloc’s stringent new competition rules by compelling users of Instagram and Facebook to pay to avoid having […]

2 mins read

New FIDO proposal lets you securely move passkeys across platforms

The Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance has published a working draft of a new specification that aims to enable the secure transfer of passkeys between different providers. Passkeys are a method of authentication without a password that leverages public-key cryptography to authenticate users without requiring them to remember or manage long strings of characters. FIDO reports that […]

2 mins read

Fraud network uses 4,700 fake shopping sites to steal credit cards

A financially motivated Chinese threat actor dubbed “SilkSpecter” is using thousands of fake online stores to steal the payment card details of online shoppers in the U.S. and Europe. The fraud campaign started in October 2024, offering steep discounts for the upcoming Black Friday shopping period that usually sees elevated shopping activity. EclecticIQ threat researcher […]

2 mins read

Hackers use macOS extended file attributes to hide malicious code

Hackers are using a novel technique that abuses extended attributes for macOS files to deliver a new trojan that researchers call RustyAttr. The threat actor is hiding malicious code in custom file metadata and also uses decoy PDF documents to help evade detection. The new technique is similar to how the Bundlore adware in 2020 hid its […]

3 mins read

Malicious PyPI package with 37,000 downloads steals AWS keys

A malicious Python package named ‘fabrice’ has been present in the Python Package Index (PyPI) since 2021, stealing Amazon Web Services credentials from unsuspecting developers. According to application security company Socket, the package has been downloaded more than 37,000 times and executes platform-specific scripts for Windows and Linux. The large number of downloads is accounted by fabrice typosquatting the […]

2 mins read

Google’s mysterious ‘search.app’ links leave Android users concerned

Google has left Android users puzzled after the most recent update to the Google mobile app causes links shared from the app to now be prepended with a mysterious “search.app” domain. As the Google app is a popular portal for searching the web for Android users and delivers a personalized content news feed referred to […]

6 mins read

Over a thousand online shops hacked to show fake product listings

A phishing campaign dubbed ‘Phish n’ Ships’ has been underway since at least 2019, infecting over a thousand legitimate online stores to promote fake product listings for hard-to-find items. Unsuspecting users clicking on those products are redirected to a network of hundreds of fake web stores that steal their personal details and money without shipping […]

3 mins read

WhatsApp now encrypts contact databases for privacy-preserving synching

The WhatsApp messenger platform has introduced Identity Proof Linked Storage (IPLS), a new privacy-preserving encrypted storage system designed for contact management. The new system solves two long-standing problems WhatsApp users have been dealing with for years, namely the risk of losing their contact lists if they lose their phone and the inability to sync contacts between different […]

2 mins read

Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

The Internet Archive was breached again, this time on their Zendesk email support platform after repeated warnings that threat actors stole exposed GitLab authentication tokens. Since last night, GeekFeed has received numerous messages from people who received replies to their old Internet Archive removal requests, warning that the organization has been breached as they did […]

5 mins read